


Faith And Belief

by DGCatAniSiri



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 07:23:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6895327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DGCatAniSiri/pseuds/DGCatAniSiri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lavellan and Cassandra need to have some serious conversations in the wake of major events.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Why aren't conversations like these included in the game? The faith and religion conversations are pretty big deals!

Stumbling through the mirror, Lyran barely managed to keep from falling on his face. He pulled himself up onto his feet as Morrigan motioned to the mirror, sealing the portal. Although Morrigan spoke some, continuing to snipe at him choosing to drink from the Well of Sorrows and denying her that knowledge, he was still in a daze.

Arlathan was destroyed by the elves. Mythal had been murdered. The few stories that the Dalish had of their ancestral gods were tales they’d made, rather than the truth of their gods. He didn’t know if Keeper Deshanna would ever accept what he’d learned at the Temple of Mythal, though he was sure she’d want to investigate the Temple and see for herself. But no one but him could experience the accumulated knowledge from the Well of Sorrows. From the Vir’abelasan.

He managed to have enough mind to dismiss the others and move out into the courtyard, moving back towards the stairway to his quarters. He got to the door, ducked through the passage, and slammed it shut behind him. He felt his knees give out, and he fell to the ground. The weight of everything seemed to hit him all at once. Even the whispers of the voices of the ancient elvhen faded as he felt it all crashing on him.

Was it all a lie? Had it always been? Were his people just telling each other fictions? He reached up and gingerly touched his vallaslin, the markings to Mythal, the ones he’d born since the day the Keeper accepted him as her First, her apprentice. Were these a lie as well? The Dalish saw them as a rite of passage, a way to honor their gods. Were they that? Were they something else? 

It was all so much to take in, Lyran couldn’t even think of how or where to start. Holding the wall to steady himself, he made his way up the stairs. Surely this was the kind of thing that demanded that he sleep some, let things rest in his head before he ever tried to make sense of it all. 

He began to pull at his armor, simply letting it fall to the floor. He knew the smiths would have a fit about the way he just let each piece drop, but he truly did not care. When he was down to just his under clothes, he practically collapsed onto the bed. 

***

It had to have been a day by the time he awoke. The sun was almost in the same place it had been when they’d returned to Skyhold. It actually was soothing to realize how long he’d slept. Anything less, he honestly thought he’d still be struggling to hold himself together. What mattered at this moment was, though, the fact that he could actually stand, look around, and not feel like the world would crumble under his feet if he breathed wrong.

There were still the whispers from the Well at the edge of his hearing. He knew that they were the voices of elves long dead, knew that they had to have information that the Dalish craved. But the last thing that he needed at the moment was to try and decipher them. The Wells’ whispers were going to carry with him for a long time, even if they were ever silenced.

It wasn’t that he had come to terms with it all, but he’d been able to compartmentalize. It would be something he could put in the back of his mind and not focus on. If he focused on it, then it would consume him. There was still so much else that needed to be done, Corypheus and his forces to deal with, whatever the Chantry might decide to do, and probably a dozen other members of the nobility of Thedas who wanted to either kiss his ring or depose the elf. Someday, he’d devote time to sifting through things that had come from the Well, though he doubted that even if he spent the rest of his life that he’d be able to understand everything. 

He took some solace from the fact that he could at least pass what he could come up with along to the Dalish. He figured Morrigan would hold it all close and only share what she deigned to, what she deemed would not be a threat to her. She would have been no better than Abelas, the elf who’d openly declared his disdain of the Dalish...

Lyran found he was growing angry about the entire encounter with Abelas. The Dalish had had their entire history, from myth to history to culture torn away from them, by Tevinter, then the Chantry. Abelas and the elves like him had been sleeping, presumably under some form of magic or another that had let them survive the centuries. They hadn’t suffered the horrors and abuses inflicted upon the elven people, and Abelas had been judging him? His people? 

The thought caused Lyran to stop, taking a deep breath. He needed to think about other things, not the anger he felt at his ancestors who’d chosen to distance themselves from the only remnants of their people who remained. The Dalish had survived this long without living examples of Arlathan. Abelas should not be his focus.

A rumble from his stomach voiced its opinion about what he should focus on. 

While there were questions asked of him, many of them from the few elves who had sought the protection of the Inquisition who weren’t ready for combat in the Arbor Wilds, apparently the advisors, having hurried back ahead of the bulk of the forces, had already declared what had taken place at the Temple of Mythal was to be classified and kept quiet, which meant that everything was already public knowledge. He did his best to beg them off, not in any fashion ready to have the conversation that all of that involved. 

In the midst of all this, he saw Cassandra, and something resembling a chill went down his spine.

He’d known a relationship with a devout member of the Chantry was going to be difficult to balance. The Chantry had spent centuries either trying to make the Dalish convert to their belief in the singular god, the Maker, and his ‘mortal bride’ Andraste, or to stamp out the Dalish’s own beliefs in the Creators. There was much that made simply coexisting difficult. In Lyran’s experience, that had more often been because of the Chantry’s adamant refusal to allow anyone they got near to even attempt to live without them proceeding to preach and convert them. 

Cassandra had, he’d always felt, been different. She listened to him speak of the Creators, of what Elgar’nan, Sylaise, June, Andruil, Mythal, and the other gods meant to him and to the Dalish. She had simply asked if he could carry another god, which he’d recognized as an olive branch on her part, which had kept him from countering that if she believed in one god, why not more. Of course there were more steps to take, but it’d been a good start. It had said there was room to build on, that maybe someday, they could find a bridge between the two beliefs.

But then... He’d heard her clearly in the Temple of Mythal. “How can the elves believe such nonsense?” Like that, it was as if the time they’d had together had meant nothing, and she was the woman who’d held a sword to his throat in the basement of Haven’s Chantry all over again. 

She approached him, concern on her features. “There you are. I was growing worried.”

“I’m glad to hear you care,” Lyran muttered, unable and unwilling to hold back his bitterness.

She blinked, surprised at the venom in his voice. “Is something wrong?” she asked. Lyran could see her going through the possibilities in her mind, saw her hand jerk towards her sword, ready to attack in the event some ancient elven spirit had chosen to reach out and take over Lyran’s body, make an attempt on the humans – the shems – who had dared to take from the Well.

Lyran let out a bitter laugh. “Oh no. I’m sure it’s just the foolish elf, acting out about more ‘nonsense’ and rot like that. However do you think they manage with their fool tales of false gods?”

To her credit, she seemed to immediately recognize that she’d erred. Not to her credit was the obvious confusion she had over where this was coming from. “I... I’m not sure what you mean.”

“At the Temple of Mythal. After Morrigan went chasing after Abelas. You said ‘how could the elves believe such nonsense.’ You asked how my people – how I could believe in the Creators, and you called them nonsense.”

Realization struck her. Cassandra understood exactly why he was angry. He could see the shock and horror at her unthinking words thrown back at her – it had been a statement made without thinking. That was, she’d said, always her problem. She spoke without forethought, she wasn’t prone to choosing her words carefully. And she had lived with the Chantry as her guiding light, an organization that had made it their mission to spread their word to all, at the expense of any other thought.

He fixed her with a dark and angry glare. “Ask me again why I would say that the Chantry has failed. When it is your religion that deems mine to be nonsense simply because it’s not your belief. I have listened to you speak about the Maker and Andraste since the day we met, and not once have I dismissed your beliefs, even when my first thought is disbelief, or to dismiss your god. I have never asked you to give up what you believe, despite all that those who share your beliefs have done to those who share mine.” He began to realize that this frustration had been building for some time, and now it was all pouring out at once. “I thought we could make this work, that we could find a way to respect both of our beliefs. I wasn’t asking you to give up the Chantry, and I thought you knew that I would not give up the Creators. That we could find a bridge between our beliefs, that we could make this work without either of us giving up anything. But once you heard that my beliefs weren’t... weren’t what I thought they were, they were back to being ‘nonsense’?”

As he took a breath, Cassandra took one of her own and started to speak as well, halting a continuing tirade from him. “I was not... I never meant... But then, that’s your point, isn’t it? That I didn’t mean to be insulting, but I was.”

Her understanding took some of the edge off of Lyran. He was still angry, and there was probably nothing that could be said that could make all of it dissipate, but she’d understood why he was angry. 

She gave him her most earnest look. “I don’t know what I might say or do that could make up for my unthinking words. I should have known better. I ask for your forgiveness. And I understand why you would withhold it.” They were the words that Lyran most wanted to hear. After all that he’d been through, it was hard for him to readily accept that it was this easy.

“You make it seem easy. Simple,” he said. “Just say a few words and... it’s all over, forgiven. Cassandra, you understand, this is MY faith we’re talking about here. As much as you, as Thedas, has dubbed me the Herald of Andraste, I don’t believe in your Maker. I believe in the Creators of my people. I can’t... I won’t give all that up, not even for you.” Regardless of what Abelas had said of what the Creators were, these were the things that Lyran had spent his entire life believing, and he could not accept them being dismissed so casually. Even by an elf of Arlathan. 

She was silent for a moment, a thoughtful look on her face. “I suppose... I was under the idea that, somehow you might. I realize it was foolish, but... The Maker, the Chantry, the Chant of Light... These have brought me peace in troubled times. It’s been important to me, and... I feel like it should be important to the man I love.”

“I feel the same about the Creators, Cassandra. They’re the ones I’ve felt have guided me through the whole of my life. I draw inspiration from them. And if Abelas was right... All of that might be wrong.” He looked to her, any trace of humor gone entirely. “I helped you through your crisis of faith, without condemning your gods and beliefs. And after what you said, while I was struggling to keep together, can you blame me for not wanting to turn to you?”

She nodded, understanding his perspective and her error. “I understand completely. It may not be worth much, but... I do apologize for my words. They were wrong.” She paused, her face inscrutable as she considered where they’d go from here. “So what do we do now?” she asked. 

There was the big question. And the answer did not seem apparent.


	2. Chapter 2

Inquisitor Ameridan was an elf. And he believed in the Creators AND the Maker.

Lyran wasn’t sure, but he was of the opinion that this was making his head spin more than the voices of the Well of Sorrows. 

He wished desperately that he could have spoken more with Ameridan before his final death. As it was, he was still trying to come up with the way he was going to make contact with clan Ghilain – a letter seemed too impersonal, but he was still the head of the Inquisition, and he couldn’t just go running off to locate a single clan, no matter who they were connected to. Josephine would probably drop her clipboard were he to even suggest he was going to do so.

He figured he shouldn’t really have been surprised about the truth of Ameridan’s origins. The Chantry had edited their own Chant to remove Shartan, take away any trace of the ‘heathen elves’ being allowed to exist as they were. And, as they’d learned in the Emerald Graves, in the ruins of Din’an Hanin, one of the Emerald Knights had decided he’d at least pretend to convert to a belief in the Chantry’s Maker, if only so he’d be able to live with the woman he loved, showing that the Chantry had an aneurysm at the very thought of attempting to bridge that divide without giving up other beliefs.

That... That led to a handful of questions that Lyran knew he needed to find an answer to.

And, so it seemed, Cassandra clearly felt the same.

“Inquisitor Ameridan was... not what I’d expected,” she said abruptly. In the months since the Temple of Mythal, she and Lyran had been strained, trying to make things work after her unthinking words and the resulting recognition of the difficulties of making their relationship work, despite their differing beliefs. As a result, he didn’t immediately respond, knowing that she had to be aware of how that statement sounded on its own. Sure enough, she continued. “By which I mean... I hadn’t expected that he revered both the Maker and the Dalish gods.”

“I... hadn’t expected that either,” Lyran nodded. He wasn’t sure what it meant. There were so many things that were packed in close with that revelation. “It seems that coexisting with other beliefs isn’t as difficult as the Chantry seems to think.”

It was a rare occasion where he explicitly verbalized his disdain of the Chantry’s attitudes practices so bluntly, particularly to Cassandra’s face. Then again, she’d had another moment of unthinking thoughts after they’d left the site of Ameridan’s death – she’d remarked that it was the absence of Dalish assistance during the Second Blight that had led to the hostility that had destroyed the Dales. At the time, Haakon had been the priority, though he’d delivered a harsh glare that she’d recognized and had looked properly abashed as she’d considered what she’d said. He considered a few petty jabs were his due.

There was a moment of silence between them. She looked to him. “The Chantry has always said that the word of the Maker must spread to all corners of the world. I’m not sure I believe that anymore.”

“Really?”

“My time with you has made me... consider things. The world is... more than the Chantry taught me to believe. I don’t know if I can believe that the Maker can only work as the Chantry knows him. If the Maker truly is divine, why can He not appear as multiple gods?”

Lyran’s first reaction was to dismiss the claim. The Creators were not the Chantry’s Maker, no matter how anyone tried to gussy them up. It was on the tip of his tongue when he stopped himself. This was Cassandra offering an olive branch. It was her best offer. She was still the Chantry’s woman, down to the very core. The Chantry had been her port in a storm too often for her to just turn her back on it, no matter what the beliefs of her lover. But she was trying to find a way to make this work all the same. She was making an attempt to find something that bridged the gap between their beliefs.

It was an effort on her part to make peace. Insulting her belief as she attempted to respect him was in pretty poor taste. “That’s... certainly one way to look at it.” Not the way that he would have, but that wasn’t the point. 

She chuckled. “I realize that it may not be how you look at it. But I do not expect you to change any more than you should me.” Lyran smiled, recognizing her point. It wasn’t likely that he would give up the Creators to go sit in a Chantry and sing their Chant, he shouldn’t expect Cassandra would turn her back on one of the few pillars of stability in her life, one that had given her meaning and purpose over the years. “As we now know, our beliefs are not entirely incompatible, much as many within the Chantry may say so. Perhaps with some time, we may even find a way to bring this knowledge to others.”

“You really believe that?”

“I must. The alternative is that we continue fighting and killing one another over our beliefs. And that idea is abhorrent to me. Belief is a powerful tool. The Chantry has wielded it as a sword too often, often in a manner more befitting a pack of bandits or squabbling politicians. Belief should be more than that. It should not divide us. It should unite us. Whether or not we believe in one god or many, or even any, surely there is a way for us to find peace, that our beliefs allow us to find a way to accept one another, not drive a wedge between us.” She took a moment, looking to Lyran. “The fact that ‘the Chantry’s’ Inquisition, as many called us, was led by a devout Dalish should be evidence of that.”

It was a nice thought. Lyran wanted to see that world, though he doubted its existence. He smiled. “That sounds positively idealistic of you, Cassandra.”

She gave a good-natured ‘harumph’ at the statement. “You are enjoying this too much, I think.” She shook her head, then, a thought seeming to strike her, looked to him. “What about you?” Off Lyran’s look of confusion, she continued. “You haven’t spoken of what we learned at the Temple of Mythal since then. I know how the things we were told there affected you. Is there... anything you wish to share?”

For a long moment, Lyran was silent in contemplation. “It... it hurt. What Abelas said. How he denied the Dalish as being ‘his’ people. Because of what we’ve lost. What we’re trying to regain.” Abelas’s words had been like a punch right into his gut. “We have spent a thousand years trying our best to reclaim a culture, a history, that has been torn away from us by... outsiders.”

“Humans, you mean.” She gave him a smile. “I am not offended by you being honest. Whatever Abelas and his elves believe, humans are not free of blame from what befell your people. The simple removal of the Canticle of Shartan is evidence of that.”

He nodded. He knew little of the Chant itself, but he’d heard quick denials of the mere existence of Shartan’s Canticle, which he knew existed. The Chantry had removed it from their canon texts in an attempt to downplay and ignore the contributions of the elves in the course of their history. He knew more than a few members of his clan who would have been willing to make more attempts at relations with humans if they were more willing to admit that elves had been an important part of their own history.

“It’s still a hard fact to accept, though. Abelas represented... everything that the Dalish seek to recover. An elf from the time of Arlathan, who witnessed our people’s fall... And to hear him insist that as far as they were concerned, we might as well be the shems...” He stopped, recognizing that the word was a symbol of the same division that they’d been speaking of. “...that we Dalish might as well be humans for all that he considered us to be elven. Hearing it from him... I still don’t really know how to deal with that.”

Cassandra considered that for a moment. “If you would like my opinion...?” He didn’t protest, so she continued. “I would suggest that you should ignore his words.” That surprised Lyran. It didn’t sound like anything he would have expected from her. “I don’t mean that he had nothing to say worth knowing. But if he would choose to horde his knowledge of your people, simply because you don’t meet his exacting definition of what an elf ‘should’ be, then that knowledge is clearly more important to him than ensuring that it is remembered. I see the value that comes from knowing the past, knowing your history. But if Abelas values that knowledge only remain in the hands of those who he deems proper elves, then he has made his choice, to horde and hide that knowledge away. If he wishes to judge you for what you do not have, he has himself to blame for keeping it, not you for not having it. Abelas spoke from a place of pride, of a place where he could not accept change. You may keep the memories of the past, but you do so to ensure the future.”

The words reminded Lyran of the Oath of the Dales – “We are the last of the Elvhenan, and never again shall we submit.” For Lyran, it had always been a declaration of intent, that the Dalish would recover the past to preserve the future. They would have a history, one that told their people to take pride in both their past, what their ancestors had accomplished, and themselves, inspire them to achieve more greatness. 

After a long, considering pause, Lyran looked to Cassandra. “So. What do we do with this new information?” 

“Obviously, first and foremost is informing Leliana of Ameridan’s origins. The new Divine is best served by having all of this available to her.”

Lyran couldn’t help but smile at that. “Leliana has already told me she intends to commission a search for a complete and accurate version of the Canticle of Shartan, with the intent to restore it to the Chant.”

That earned a laugh from Cassandra. “I am not surprised. Despite our different views of the Chantry, Leliana and I both despise the revisionist history that has marked its past. In rebuilding the Seekers, I hope to make it clear that the truth comes before anything else. Changing history to suit our whims only makes us blind to our faults. We must aspire to be better.”

The words made Lyran smile. There was a reason he had been drawn to this woman, a woman who embodied the religion that he’d spent his life being taught would wipe out his people and their beliefs if given the opportunity. She believed in more than the Chantry, than its Chant and its Maker. She believed in making things better. That when the world is crumbling under her feet, she should stand against it. That the truth mattered, whether or not it aligned with a certain belief.

“If you are at the forefront of that effort, I think the Seekers will do just that.”


End file.
